Outmind

Released on Flying Lotus' Brainfeeder imprint, this is another texture-heavy, blunted take on West Coast instrumental hip-hop.

Of all the artists working in Los Angeles' experimental beat scene, Matthewdavid might be the strangest. The producer, whose real name is Matthew McQueen, runs the sound-collage cassette imprint Leaving Records, and as a musician, makes tracks with little regard for traditional structure and composition. His texture-heavy style takes the already blunted traits of West Coast instrumental hip-hop (blown-out beats, woozy atmospherics) and jumbles them up even further to build something uniquely psychedelic.

McQueen's debut full-length, released on pal Flying Lotus' Brainfeeder imprint, throws a bunch of ideas on the table at once-- you've often got tape hiss, field recordings, warped bass, and scratchy ambience all rubbing elbows in the same song. It's a heady, no-holds-barred approach to production that's sometimes very appealing. On a track such as "Like You Mean It", which is grimy and dubstep-leaning but fleshed out with strings and vocal samples, there's this cool kaleidoscopic quality, like spinning the radio dial between three or four vaguely similar stations at the same time.

The flipside is that with so much swirling around, Outmind can feel disjointed and even kind of exhausting. I don't think it's an error in execution-- it seems McQueen wants to keep edges frayed to reinforce the record's hallucinatory vibe. Take "Cucumber-Lime", all gurgling and ambient-- there's an undercurrent of melody that wants to match up with the rolling beat but is always about a half step behind. It doesn't congeal into something more substantial-- and maybe that's McQueen's point, to keep things loose and process-driven-- but to these ears, the song sounds half-formed.

It can be hard to shake this unfinished quality, especially on quieter interstitial pieces like the weirdly minor Flying Lotus collaboration "Group Tea". What ultimately makes up for these shortcomings, though, is that when these songs are working, they really don't sound like much else. The warbling psych-pop-meets-crunching post-dub of "Being Without You"? That thing could warrant its own subgenre. His ambition and willingness to try just about anything in the quest for new, weird sound combinations here is commendable. So even when McQueen stumbles, it's exciting to hear him lay it all out there.